Analysis and Recommendations of Social Media Marketing Strategy in Electronic Marketing for 2014 Shanghai Jz Festival

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2. 2013 JZ Festival goals and SMART objectives

2.1 Event goals

Event goals are overall statement providing direction to the organization of the event (Getz, 2012). The goals of Shanghai Jazz Festival are: to show different elements of the Jazz music, to show the internationalization and diversification, to gather people who love jazz together, to let the whole city is the stage, to make it the most shanghai-style international music festival, and to promote and educate jazz music to audience all over the world.

2.2 Event SMART objectives

Event objectives are set of performance benchmarks fit with event goals and used to quantify whether planning is failed or succeed (Tassiopoulos, 2005). SMART objectives providing the fact objectives should be are useful to apply to establish objectives: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely (Tassiopoulos, 2005).

Event objectives: To increase ticket selling of at least 20 percent through different online tickets agencies two days before performance days: 19 and 20 September, 2014; to invite at least 10 percent more of high level performers worldwide per day of music show; to retain 95 percent of the sponsors and exhibitors; to achieve 10 percent more sales from previous event attendees; to attract 10 percent more volunteers and to increase 10 percent attendance. All are achieved by raising 30 percent of the social media users through online and mobile for this Festival by June, 2014.

- Market segmentation

3.1 Definition and roles of market segmentation

Market segmentation is the process of identifying potential target market (Tkaczynski & Rundle-Thiele, 2011). It means to divide market into different segments and identify similar demands patterns based on certain approaches: geographical, socio-economic, demographic, life stage and psych graphic segmentation to target and serve the most accurate consumer groups (Sun, 2009). Its objective is to find groups with similar product preferences but those groups are sufficiently diverse from each other (Sun, 2009). Market segmentation plays roles in mainly two aspects: help to achieve the best marketing mix and strategies for each specific segment and to get the feedback and adjust marketing strategies easily (Boundless, n.d.).

3.2 Rationale for psychographic segmentation and three lifestyles segments

For JZ Festival, psychographic segmentation is the more useful way to profile attendees than others. This is because JZ Festival is an intangible product but more like a leisure service, consumer will link it to values. Psychographic segmentation refers to the relationship between lifestyle of a social segments and consumption, which seeks to assess consumers’ interest, opinions and preference activities based on their lifestyle and values (Tkaczynski & Rundle-Thiele, 2011). So it exactly matches the potential market demand.

The target markets of JZ Festival are local people and foreigners who have interests in leisure and recreation, have opinions on social and cultural issues, and prefer to attend activities related to their hobbies. For example, people who consider themselves be jazz advocates may have interest in jazz festival which are essentially about enjoying jazz music and performance from famous worldwide singers and bands. In particular, there are three distinct lifestyle segments in profile characteristics of target audience based on psych graphical: education and training consumers who are music professionals, networking consumers who are business people and love music and entertainment consumers who are students and young fashion people.

4. Market research

4.1 Definition of market research

Market research conducted with intended target market is the design, collection and analysis of data about specific marketing issues (Kotler, Bowen, & Makens, 2007). Market research is useful to identify characteristics of target audience and beneficial for creating event content and boosting ticket sales (Malhotra & Birks, 2007). The data includes primary data is the original information collected by organizers such as gender, age, profession, likes and dislikes, spending habits while secondary data is already been collected by other sources such as market share and sales figures (Getz, 2012).

4.2 Types and comparison of market research

And there are two approaches of market research: primary research and secondary research, primary research including qualitative research such as interviews and focus group and quantitative research such as questionnaires and surveys (Malhotra & Birks, 2007). The benefits for secondary research are that it costs lower than primary research, it has less influenced by respondent bias and it can be used for comparative base for previous event. However, it can be out of date and demographic information of target audience directly applied to the event product should use primary research (Armstrong & Kotler, 2007).

4.3 Online market research for 2014 JZ Festival

There is no evidence showed JZ Festival 2013 conducted market research in pre-event stage, which should be improved 2014. Online survey linked with social media platform is appropriate for JZ Festival. Because online is an economical and quick way to get lots of deep responses and reach more consumers, more important is organizers can get immediate consumers’ feedback about qualitative insight and quantitative data to alter marketing strategies with potential target markets’ perception (Morag , 2010). HSBC used online research via Face Trace technology to analyze facial expressions and to get real-time feedback of their service and is successful to know reliable unconscious mind about the brand, Btiavya Shah argues, manager of group customer experience at HSBC (Morag , 2010).

For JZ Festival, the survey in Appendix 1 could put on its official website with a link on Douban, note that anyone who click “interest in this event” should fill in the survey. And then, consumers need to share it on Weibo to get chances given away Jazz Music souvenirs. Research showed that over 51 percent of people will use social tools per day (Speed way research institute, 2013). So consumers will easier to see the link on social networking sites than just put it on event site. And finish the survey to share it on Weibo costs nothing but chance to get free gift is appealing to consumers